Mincing Lane.
I cannot agree with your correspondent E. S. T. T., that a corruption of meaning has taken place in this word; and that whereas it originally meant a selection of the good and a discarding of the bad parts of anything, its present meaning, is exactly the reverse of this. Its original signification is correctly stated: the garbling of spices, drugs, &c., meant the selection of the good and the rejection of the bad. But the garbling of a passage cited as a testimony is a precisely analogous process. The person who garbles the passage omits those parts which can be used against his view, and adduces only those parts which support his conclusion. He selects the parts which are good, and rejects those which are bad, for his purpose. When a passage is said to be garbled, it is always implied that the person who quotes it has suppressed a portion which tells against himself; but that portion is, so far as he is concerned, the bad, not the good portion. The secondary and metaphorical is therefore precisely analogous to the primary and literal sense of the word, and not the reverse of it.
L.
Electric Telegraph (Vol. ix., p. 270.).—As every new attempt to improve this invaluable invention, and to extend its use, is of world-wide importance, the following extract from La Presse, a French newspaper of March 23rd, will excite inquiry:
"On écrit de Berne, le 17 Mars, MM. Brunner et Hipp, directeurs des télégraphes électriques de la Suisse, viennent d'inventer un appareil portatif à l'aide duquel, en l'appliquant à un point quelconque des fils télégraphiques, on peut transmettre une dépêche. L'essai de cet appareil a été fait à deux lieues de Berne, dans un lieu où il n'existe aucune section de télégraphie."
The writer goes on to say that the experiment had been tested with success on the lines to Zurich, Basle, Geneva, &c.
J. Macray.
Oxford.
Butler's "Lives of the Saints" (Vol. viii., p.387.).—The inquiry respecting the various editions of this valuable work not having yet received any answer, the following information may in some degree satisfy the inquirer. The first edition of the Rev. Alban Butler's Lives of the Saints was published in the author's lifetime, at various intervals from 1754 to 1759, when the last of the four volumes appeared, of which the edition was composed. Part II. of vol. iii. is now before me, with the date 1758. No other edition appeared till after the death of the learned and pious author, which took place in 1773.
The second edition was undertaken by the most Rev. Dr. Carpenter, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, and appeared in 12 vols. in 1779. It is stated in the title-page to be "corrected and enlarged from the author's own MS." It did contain all the notes omitted in the previous edition, and other matter prepared by the author. The third edition was published in Scotland, and other editions followed; but I am unable to give any particulars of them. But the splendid stereotype edition, published in London by Murphy, in 1812, in 12 vols., is by far the best ever produced, or ever likely to appear. Since this there have been other editions; one in 2 vols., published in Ireland, and a cheap edition in 12 small vols., printed at Derby; but they deserve little notice.